by Alan Sokal
It is amusing to see the reviewer’s misunderstandings as he tries to understand (and thinks he understands) Virilio’s fantasies concerning relativity. We fear that more cogent arguments will be required to pulverize our own ‘nagging opinions’.
226 Particularly L’Espace critique (1984), L’Inertie polaire (1990) and La Vitesse de libération (1995). The first of these is translated as The Lost Dimension (1991), and the third as Open Sky (1997).
227 We have corrected a typographical error in the translation, in which ‘espace dromosphérique’ was rendered as ‘dromospheric sphere’ rather than ‘dromospheric space’.
228 See, for example, Nagel and Newman (1958).
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229 Debray (1981, p. 10).
230 The text quoted here is relatively old; but one finds the same idea in Media Manifestos (1994, p. 12 and 1996a, p. 4). Subsequently, however, Debray seems to have retreated to a more prudent position: in a recent lecture (Debray 1996b) he admits that ‘Gödelitis is a widespread disease’ (p. 6) and that ‘extrapolating a scientific result, and generalizing it outside of its specific field of relevance, can lead ... to gross errors’ (p. 7); he says also that his use of Gödel’s theorem is intended as ‘simply metaphorical or isomorphic’ (p. 7).
231 Serres (1995, p. 451). See also Dhombres (1994, p. 195) for a critical remark on this ‘principle’.
232 Where one finds this gem: speaking of the Ancien Régime, Serres writes that ‘the clergy occupied a very precise place in society. Dominant and dominated, neither dominated nor dominant, this place, within each dominant or dominated class, belonged to neither one nor the other, to neither the dominated nor the dominant.’ (Serres 1995, p. 453)
233 See p. 42 above for a brief explanation of the axiom of choice.
234 See note 41 above for a brief explanation of the continuum hypothesis.
235 The French Maoist discourse of the late 1960s insisted on a sharp opposition between ‘politics’, which was supposed to be put in the commanding position, and trade unionism.
236 For what it’s worth, the ‘mathematics’ in this paragraph are also rather meaningless.
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237 We do not want to get involved in terminological disputes about the distinctions between ‘postmodernism’, ‘poststructuralism’ and so forth. Some writers use the term ‘poststructuralism’ (or ‘anti-foundationalism’) to denote a particular collection of philosophical and social theories, and ‘postmodernism’ (or ‘postmodernity’) to denote a wider set of trends in contemporary society. For simplicity, we shall use the term ‘postmodernism’, while emphasizing that we shall be concentrating on the philosophical and intellectual aspects and that the validity or invalidity of our arguments can in no way depend on the use of a word.
238 Indeed, we have no strong views on postmodernism in art, architecture or literature.
239 See also Epstein (1997) for a useful distinction between the ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ versions of postmodernism.
240 This expression was apparently first used by Andrew Ross, one of the editors of Social Text, who asserted (rather tendentiously) that
the Science Wars [are] a second front opened up by conservatives cheered by the successes of their legions in the holy Culture Wars. Seeking explanations for their loss of standing in the public eye and the decline in funding from the public purse, conservatives in science have joined the backlash against the (new) usual suspects – pinkos, feminists and multiculturalists. (Ross 1995, p. 346)
Later, the phrase was used as the title of the special issue of Social Text in which Sokal’s hoax article appeared (Ross 1996).
241 See Feyerabend (1975, p. 308).
242 See, for example, Barnes, Bloor and Henry (1996, p. 41); and for a cogent critique, see Mermin (1998).
243 Which is not to say, of course, that they would not be profoundly modified, as chemistry was.
244 See Sokal (1998) for an extensive, though by no means exhaustive, list of what we see as valid tasks for the history and sociology of science.
245 We emphasize that what follows is not intended as a comprehensive list of the conditions for a fruitful dialogue between the natural and the human sciences, but simply as a reflection on the lessons to be drawn from the texts cited in this book. Many other criticisms can, of course, be made of both the natural and the human sciences, but they are beyond the scope of the present discussion.
246 As positive examples of this attitude, let us mention, among others, the works of Albert (1992) and Maudlin (1994) on the foundations of quantum mechanics.
247 To give just a few examples, let us mention Feynman (1965) in physics, Dawkins (1986) in biology, and Pinker (1995) in linguistics. We do not necessarily agree with everything these authors say, but we consider them models of clarity.
248 For similar observations, see the remarks of Noam Chomsky quoted by Barsky (1997, pp. 197–8).
249 We don’t want to be unduly pessimistic about the probable response to our book, but let us note that the story of the emperor’s new clothes ends as follows: ‘And the chamberlains went on carrying the train that wasn’t there.’
250 For example, a sociologist friend asked us, not unreasonably: Isn’t it contradictory for quantum mechanics to exhibit both ‘discontinuity’ and ‘interconnectedness’? Aren’t these properties opposites? The brief answer is that these properties characterize quantum mechanics in very specific senses – which require a mathematical knowledge of the theory to be properly understood – and that, in these senses, the two notions do not contradict one another.
251 See, for example, Weinberg (1992, chapter III) and Weinberg (1995).
252 For a good illustration of the complexity of the interaction between observation and theory, see Weinberg (1992, chapter V) and Einstein (1949).
253 More recent, and even more extreme, examples of scientism can be found in the alleged ‘applications’ of the theories of chaos, complexity and self-organization to sociology, history and business management.
254 Lyotard (1984, p. xxiv).
255 This last question is nevertheless rather subtle. All beliefs, even mythical ones, are constrained, at least in part, by the phenomena to which they refer. And, as we showed in Chapter 4, the ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of science, which is a kind of anthropological relativism applied to contemporary science, goes astray precisely because it neglects this latter aspect, which plays a crucial role in the natural sciences.
256 Johnson (1996, p. C13). A more detailed exposition of Anyon’s views can be found in Anyon et al. (1996).
257 But probably not, because essentially identical views are expressed in Anyon et al. (1996).
258 During a debate at New York University, where this example was mentioned, many people seemed not to understand or accept this elementary remark. The problem presumably comes, at least in part, from the fact that they have redefined ‘truth’ as a belief that is ‘locally accepted as such’ or else as an ‘interpretation’ that fulfills a given psychological and social role. It is difficult to say what shocks us the most: someone who believes that the creationist myths are true (in the usual sense of the word) or someone who adheres systematically to this redefinition of the word ‘true’. For a more detailed discussion of this example and in particular of the possible meanings of the word ‘valid’, see Boghossian (1996).
259 When challenged, relativist anthropologists sometimes deny that there is a distinction between knowledge (i.e. justified true belief) and mere belief, by denying that beliefs – even cognitive beliefs about the external world – can be objectively (transculturally) true or false. But it is hard to take such a claim seriously. Didn’t millions of Native Americans really die in the period following the European invasion? Is this merely a belief held to be true within some cultures?
260 Which is not to say that the student or the researcher cannot profit from reading classical texts. It all depends upon the pedago
gical qualities of the authors in question. For example, physicists today can read Galileo and Einstein both for the sheer pleasure of their writing and for their deep insight. And biologists can certainly do likewise with Darwin.
261 Extreme versions of this idea can be found, for example, in Ross (1995) and Harding (1996).
262 But not only the left: see the quotation from Václav Havel on p. 181 above.
263 A similar observation holds when a famous individual holds ideas of type A and B.
264 For a more detailed discussion, see Eagleton (1995) and Epstein (1995, 1997).
265 Russell (1949 [1920], p. 80), reprinted in Russell (1961b, pp. 528–9).
266 For further analysis, see Epstein (1995, 1997).
267 See also Eagleton (1995).
268 For an example of such confusions, see the essay of Raskin and Bernstein (1987, pp. 69–103); and for a good dissection of these confusions, see the responses by Chomsky in the same volume (pp. 104–56).
269 It must nevertheless be emphasized that technology is often blamed for consequences that are due more to the social structure than to technology itself.
270 Let us note, in passing, that it is precisely the emphasis on objectivity and verification that offers the best protection against ideological bias masquerading as science.
271 According to recent polls, 47 per cent of Americans believe in the creation account of Genesis, 49 per cent in possession by the devil, 36 per cent in telepathy, and 25 per cent in astrology. Mercifully, only 11 per cent believe in channeling, and 7 per cent in the healing power of pyramids. For detailed data and references to the original sources, see Sokal (1996c, note 17), reprinted here in Appendix C.
272 See, for example, Chomsky (1992–3), Ehrenreich (1992–3), Albert (1992–3, 1996) and Epstein (1997) among many others.
273 Much further down in the New York Times article (Scott 1996), the reporter mentions Sokal’s leftist political positions and the fact that he taught mathematics in Nicaragua during the Sandinista government. But the contradiction is not even noticed, much less resolved.
274 Note, however, that postmodernists and relativists are ill-placed to criticize this threat to scientific objectivity, since they deny objectivity even as a goal.
275 This phenomenon is by no means due to postmodernism – Andreski (1972) illustrated it brilliantly for the traditional social sciences – and it is also present, to a much lesser extent, in the natural sciences. Nevertheless, the obscurity of postmodernist jargon, and its almost total lack of contact with concrete realities, exacerbate this situation.
276 Pollitt (1996).
277 In the French edition we wrote ‘but is undoubtedly somewhat passé there’, but contacts we have had since the publication of our book have led us to rethink. For example, Lacanianism is extraordinarily influential in French psychiatry.
278 See, for example, Kimball (1990) and D’Souza (1991).
279 The word ‘logically’ is important here. In practice, some individuals use postmodern language while opposing racist or sexist discourses with perfectly rational arguments. We think, simply, that there is an incoherence here between their practice and their avowed philosophy (which may not be such a horrible thing).
280 Notably the feminist writers Barbara Ehrenreich and Katha Pollitt and the leftist filmmaker Michael Moore.
281 Accounts of the Left Conservatism conference can be found in Sand (1998), Willis et al. (1998), Dumm et al. (1998) and Zarlengo (1998).
282 Another encouraging sign is that some of the most insightful commentary has been produced by students, both in France (Coutty 1998) and in the U.S. (Sand 1998).
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* Originally published in Social Text 46/47 (spring/summer 1996), pp. 217–52. © Duke University Press.
1 Heisenberg (1958), Bohr (1963).
2 Kuhn (1970), Feyerabend (1975), Latour (1987), Aronowitz (1988b), Bloor (1991).
3 Merchant (1980), Keller (1985), Harding (1986, 1991), Haraway (1989, 1991), Best (1991).
4 Aronowitz (1988b, especially chs 9 and 12).
5 Ross (1991, introduction and ch. 1).
6 Irigaray (1985), Hayles (1992).
7 Harding (1986, especially chs 2 and 10); Harding (1991, especially ch. 4).
8 For a sampling of views, see Jammer (1974), Bell (1987), Albert (1992), Dürr, Goldstein and Zanghí (1992), Weinberg (1992, ch. IV), Coleman (1993), Maudlin (1994), Bricmont (1994).
9 Heisenberg (1958, pp. 15, 28–9), emphasis in Heisenberg’s original. See also Over-street (1980), Craige (1982), Hayles (1984), Greenberg (1990), Booker (1990) and Porter (1990) for examples of cross-fertilization of ideas between relativistic quantum theory and literary criticism.
10 Unfortunately, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has frequently been misinterpreted by amateur philosophers. As Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1994, pp. 129–30) lucidly point out,
in quantum physics, Heisenberg’s demon does not express the impossibility of measuring both the speed and the position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective interference of the measure with the measured, but it measures exactly an objective state of affairs that leaves the respective position of two of its particles outside of the field of its actualization, the number of independent variables being reduced and the values of the coordinates having the same probability. ... Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never relative to a subject: it constitutes not a relativity of truth but, on the contrary, a truth of the relative, that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders according to the values it extracts from them in its system of coordinates ...
11 Bohr (1928), cited in Pais (1991, p. 314).
12 Aronowitz (1988b, pp. 251–6).
13 See also Porush (1989) for a fascinating account of how a second group of scientists and engineers – cyberneticists – contrived, with considerable success, to subvert the most revolutionary implications of quantum physics. The main limitation of Porush’s critique is that it remains solely on a cultural and philosophical plane; his conclusions would be immeasurably strengthened by an analysis of economic and political factors. (For example, Porush fails to mention that engineer-cyberneticist Claude Shannon worked for then-telephone monopoly AT&T.) A careful analysis would show, I think, that the victory of cybernetics over quantum physics in the 1940s and 50s can be explained in large part by the centrality of cybernetics to the ongoing capitalist drive for automation of industrial production, compared to the marginal industrial relevance of quantum mechanics.
14 Pais (1991, p. 23). Aronowitz (1981, p. 28) has noted that wave-particle duality renders the “will to totality in modern science” severely problematic:
The differences within physics between wave and particle theories of matter, the indeterminacy principle discovered by Heisenberg, Einstein’s relativity theory, all are accommodations to the impossibility of arriving at a unified field theory, one in which the ‘anomaly’ of difference for a theory which posits identity may be resolved without challenging the presuppositions of science itself.
For further development of these ideas, see Aronowitz (1988a, pp. 524–5, 533).
15 Heinsenberg (1958, pp. 40–1).
16 Bohr (1934), cited in Jammer (1974, p. 102). Bohr’s analysis of the complementarity principle also led him to a social outlook which was, for its time and place, notably progressive. Consider the following excerpt from a 1938 lecture (Bohr 1958, p. 30):
I may perhaps here remind you of the extent to which in certain societies the roles of men and women are reversed, not only regarding domestic and social duties but also regarding behaviour and mentality. Even if many of us, in such a situation, might perhaps at first shrink from admitting the possibility that it is entirely a caprice of fate that the people concerned have their specific culture and not ours, and we not theirs instead of our own, it is clear that even the slightest suspicion in this respect implies a betrayal of the national complacency inherent in any human culture resting i
n itself.
17 Froula (1985).
18 Honner (1994).
19 Plotnitsky (1994). This impressive work also explains the intimate connections with Gödel’s proof of the incompleteness of formal systems and with Skolem’s construction of nonstandard models of arithmetic, as well as with Bataille’s general economy. For further discussion of Bataille’s physics, see Hochroth (1995).
20 Numerous other examples could be adduced. For instance, Barbara Johnson (1989, p. 12) makes no specific reference to quantum physics; but her description of deconstruction is an eerily exact summary of the complementarity principle:
Instead of a simple “either/or” structure, deconstruction attempts to elaborate a discourse that says neither “either/or”, nor “both/and” nor even “neither/nor”, while at the same time not totally abandoning these logics either.
See also McCarthy (1992) for a thought-provoking analysis that raises disturbing questions about the “complicity” between (nonrelativistic) quantum physics and deconstruction.
21 Permit me in this regard a personal recollection: Fifteen years ago, when I was a graduate student, my research in relativistic quantum field theory led me to an approach which I called “de[con]structive quantum field theory” (Sokal 1982). Of course, at that time I was completely ignorant of Jacques Derrida’s work on deconstruction in philosophy and literary theory. In retrospect, however, there is a striking affinity: my work can be read as an exploration of how the orthodox discourse (e.g. Itzykson and Zuber 1980) on scalar quantum field theory in four-dimensional spacetime (in technical terms, “renormalized perturbation theory” for the theory) can be seen to assert its own unreliability and thereby to undermine its own affirmations. Since then, my work has shifted to other questions, mostly connected with phase transitions; but subtle homologies between the two fields can be discerned, notably the theme of discontinuity (see Notes 22 and 81 below). For further examples of deconstruction in quantum field theory, see Merz and Knorr Cetina (1994).